Virgin America is the only carrier “doing a fantastic job” of offering a healthy menu, ranking No. 1 among 13 major airlines. Fort Worth-based American Airlines was No. 7 and its sister carrier US Airways ranked No. 8. (The two airlines merged in December 2013.) Dallas-based Southwest Airlines was No. 9.

Here’s a more detailed chart I created based on the analysis by DietDetective founder Charles Platkin:

Price of seven U.S. airline stocks on Google Finance after the stock market closed today.

Fears about the Ebola disease deflated U.S. airline stocks today — one day after public health officials reported the nation’s first confirmed Ebola patient had flown from Liberia to Dallas two weeks ago.

UPDATED AT 3:45 P.M.: Overall, seven U.S. airline stocks declined more than the Dow Jones stock index’s drop of 1.4 percent today. During the day, all seven stocks traded lower than their closing prices — down as much as 5.2 percent (United Airlines).

The U.S. Ebola case is “pressuring airline stocks a little bit,” Stifel Financial Corp. analyst Joe Denardi told Bloomberg News. “The worse the news headlines get about this, the more risk there is to airlines.”

U.S. carriers operate only a handful of flights to Africa, where the Ebola virus outbreak is concentrated. Any potential financial threat to the U.S. airline industry would occur if travelers cut back on flying for fear of exposure to Ebola, similar to what happened with severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003, Denardi said.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden yesterday said there was “zero risk of transmission” of Ebola on the commercial airline flight which carried the Ebola patient. In a live briefing yesterday from Atlanta, he said the person showed no symptoms before boarding the plane and was not contagious.

The Associated Press today identified the patient as Thomas Eric Duncan, based on an interview with his sister.

The name of the airline and the route of travel have not been disclosed.

Shares of American and Southwest declined even though both companies yesterday said they weren’t involved with the Ebola patient.

An American Airlines spokeswoman said the airline “was told the passenger was not on a connecting flight involving our aircraft.” A Southwest spokesman said the CDC has not contacted it and has “no information about Southwest being involved in any way.”

No airlines serve Africa directly from Dallas airports and none of the major U.S. carriers with overseas networks — American, United and Delta Air Lines — fly to Liberia. However, the patient could have arrived in Dallas from connecting flights in another country or U.S. city.

The patient arrived in the United States on Sept. 20 to visit family, developed symptoms on Sept. 24 and was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas on Sept. 28. The patient, who is critically ill, is being kept in isolation at the hospital, according to the CDC.

American Airlines and its US Airways subsidiary ranked among the U.S. passenger airlines that saw higher employment in March from a year earlier, according to data released today by the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Employment at all U.S. passenger airlines rose 0.8 percent, or by 3,070 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs), to 383,610. March was the fourth straight month of higher employment from last year.

U.S. airlines carried 52.4 million total passengers in February — basically flat from a year earlier — as the number of flights declined, according to data released today by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Among the top 10 U.S. airlines, Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, excluding AirTran Airways, saw the largest gain in the number of passengers boarding planes (enplaned passengers), up 6.2 percent to just under 7.9 million people for the year ended February.

The number of U.S. and international (systemwide) flights fell 5 percent in February. Passengers flew slightly longer flights.

Fort Worth-based American Airlines saw a 0.2 percent increase to about 6.4 million enplaned passengers and its US Airways subsidiary saw a 8.7 percent drop to about 4.4 million enplaned passengers. The American Eagle regional carrier saw a 5.6 percent decline to nearly 1.3 million enplaned passengers.

Here are some other details for February:

* The number of U.S. passengers decreased 0.5 percent to 45.5 million, while the number of international passengers increased 2.6 percent to 6.9 million.

As allowed in a new contract between American Airlines and its pilots, American is expanding its code-sharing arrangement with Alaska Airlines.

American and Alaska announced Monday that American will put its code and flight numbers on more of Alaska’s flights, and Alaska will put its code and flight numbers on more of American’s flights:

American and Alaska Airlines have done code-sharing for some time, but the size of their marketing arrangement was limited by American’s contract with the Allied Pilots Association. A new contract approved in December significantly expands the size of such marketing arrangements.

American is expected in the near future to announce a code-sharing deal with JetBlue Airways. Currently the two have an interline agreement in which they connect passengers, but they don’t put ther own code and flight number on the other’s flights.

American will code-share on 22 Alaska routes from the San Francisco Bay area to Hawaii and from Pacific Northwest airports and San Diego to Boston, Washington, D.C. and Orlando, Fla.

Alaska will put its code and flight number on American’s flights between Los Angeles and a number of cities and on some flights out of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

“The relationship American has with Alaska is strategically important to us as it expands our reach along the West Coast, providing our customers with access to destinations beyond our network,” said Kurt Stache, American’s vice president of strategic alliances, said in the carrier’s announcement.

“The expanded code-share relationship not only further improves access for our customers as they travel throughout the U.S. but also provides our customers with a seamless travel experience when flying on Alaska,” Stache said.

Andrew Harrison, Alaska’s vice president of planning and revenue management, said Alaska’s customers have benefited for more than 10 years from Alaska’s marketing alliance with American.

“This code-share expansion will offer our customers even greater access to American’s extensive network,” Harrison said. “Alaska’s elite-level frequent fliers will continue to enjoy a seamless customer experience when they travel on American, including free checked bags, priority boarding and priority seating – the same benefits they receive when flying on Alaska Airlines.”

The two carriers will begin offering the code-sharing flights Monday for travel beginning Thursday.

With JetBlue Airways’ filing of its December and full year traffic on Friday, we’ve got all the big carriers reporting. Here are some observations (revised Monday, Jan. 14, 2013, after Spirit Airlines reported its December and full year numbers):

– The four largest carriers – United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines – all operated less capacity in 2012 than in 2011. The next five carriers increased their capacity.

– United, the world’s largest airline, saw its margin in traffic over No. 2 Delta shrink. In 2011, it led Delta by 13.48 billion revenue passenger miles. In 2012, the lead dropped to 9.85 billion. Put another way, it was 8 percent larger than Delta in 2011, 5.8 percent larger in 2012.

– In capacity, United had a lead of 15.99 billion available seat miles in 2011, 15.48 billion in 2012. United was 7.9 percent larger than Delta in capacity in 2011, 7.7 percent in 2012.

– You may have noticed that the gap shrank more quickly in traffic than capacity. That would indicate that Delta was showing better results on load factor.

– In fact, Delta’s load factor went up 1.7 points to 84.4 percent. United’s went up 0.1 points to 82.9 percent. (United was 0.1 point ahead of Delta in 2011, 1.5 points behind in 2012.)

– Overall for U.S. carriers, traffic in revenue passenger miles and absolute passengers increased only about 1.3 percent in 2012 over 2011.

– Capacity in available seat miles was up less, 0.4 percent, helping the carriers show a 0.7 percentage point increase in load factors, to 83.0 percent.

Here are the charts for the U.S. airlines that we have in hand. Traffic is thousands of revenue passenger miles; capacity is thousands of available seat miles. We put full year results first, followed by December’s results.

With JetBlue Airways finally reporting its October operating numbers Thursday, all the major carriers have reported their results for last month. Some observations:

– Traffic overall was down, but not as much as capacity.

– Most carriers saw an increase in traffic, but several big airlines – American Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines – pushed the total to a loss.

– Hawaiian Airlines, we suppose because of its new Asian routes, is showing a big increase in traffic and capacity.

– No. 2 Delta Air Lines is narrowing the gap with No. 1 United. Last October, Delta trailed United by 989 million revenue passenger miles and 1.36 billion available seat miles. This October, Delta trailed by 191 million RPMs and 660 million ASMs.

– American Airlines, which has bragged for months and months about how its year-over-year growth in unit revenue was leading the industry, finished behind Delta, JetBlue, Southwest United and US Airways in October. (Incidentally, we didn’t get our usual call to point out how well AMR did.)

Other tracking services had indicated that American’s on-time numbers were its usual mid-pack to lower echelon performance through Sept. 12. On Sept. 13, as delays caused by mechanical issues spiked upwards, its numbers plummeted.

In addition, its cancellations numbers went up in September as well, with the big jump coming Sept. 13 and afterward.

According to the BTS data, American canceled 3.1 percent of its flights that month, compared to an industry average of 0.8 percent. The second worst was ExpressJet, which canceled 1.3 percent of its flights.

In all, American operated 8.5 percent of the flights recorded by the 15 airlines, and recorded 33 percent of the cancellations.

Here’s the list of cancellations:

Air Flights Flights Percent of Percent of all carrier scheduled canceled schedule cancellations

American Airlines 41,825 1,304 3.1% 33.0%

ExpressJet Airlines 60,474 804 1.3% 20.3%

SkyWest Airlines 50,086 498 1.0% 12.6%

Mesa Airlines V/ 10,193 92 0.9% 2.3%

Alaska Airlines 11,986 79 0.7% 2.0%

American Eagle 38,870 236 0.6% 6.0%

United Airlines 42,806 257 0.6% 6.5%

Southwest Airlines 89,927 345 0.4% 8.7%

Us Airways 31,495 141 0.4% 3.6%

AirTran Airways 16,362 46 0.3% 1.2%

Delta Air Lines 61,038 115 0.2% 2.9%

Frontier Airlines 6,356 7 0.1% 0.2%

JetBlue Airways 18,147 26 0.1% 0.7%

Virgin America 4,629 3 0.1% 0.1%

Hawaiian Airlines 6,005 0 0.0% 0.0%

Total 490,199 3,953 0.8% 100.0%

In rates of mishandled bags, it ranked 10th, although regional partner American Eagle finished last at 15.

One would think it would rank worst in rate of consumer complaints, but American managed a 14th place in that category, with 2.47 complaints per 100,000 passengers. Last place went to United Airlines with 2.94 complaints per 100,000.

However, of the 15, American’s rate of complaints increased the most from September 2011, when it got 1.50 complaints per 100,000. That’s a 0.97 increase. Next worse was United, up 0.55 complaints.

The industry average on complaints was 1.24. Excluding American and United, the rate was 0.68. American and United received 373 complaints combined, compared to 250 for the other 13 carriers.

In the category of useless information, let’s rank a bunch of airlines on how many Facebook “likes” and Twitter followers they have. These numbers are as of 1:50 to 1:55 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, since the stats change constantly.

UPDATED: Thanks to the reader who pointed me to the United Airlines’ Facebook page. We have re-sorted the list with United’s numbers supplemented.

Some airlines have more than one Twitter account; we tried to find the main one, such the home country listings for Air France, KLM, Lufthansa and British Airways rather than their U.S. accounts.